


Turn My Heresy into Gospel

by Lily (alyelle)



Category: Fringe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-24
Updated: 2012-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-30 01:39:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyelle/pseuds/Lily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's scared and he glimmers but at the end of the day, there is only one option. Spoilers for 2x14, <i>Jacksonville</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Turn My Heresy into Gospel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pukajen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pukajen/gifts).



> From [this prompt](http://fringe-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/1827.html?replyto=174115) at the Fringe Kinkmeme's Secret Santa 2011 at Dreamwidth. Also archived at [Dreamwidth](http://stowaway.dreamwidth.org/23783.html). If you have open ID, please consider leaving your kudos/review/comment there so I can thank you properly! 
> 
> Thank you to my beautiful beta readers, Tree and Jenn, and also to Tess, who is the most supportive BFF a girl could have and who listened to my endless blather about a fandom she doesn't belong to while I was writing. I couldn't have finished this without you guys.

**

“It’s too late.”

Olivia’s voice is thick; it catches in her throat. The sound sets tiny barbs of pain pricking at his heart. Peter looks again at the hands tucked too casually into her pockets, wondering how he could have missed the tell-tale white knuckles peeking out the top, or the defeated slump of her shoulders.

“I’ve failed. I’ve failed and I’m supposed to be the one who can stop things like this.”

“Olivia.”

Her eyes blink rapidly but it’s not enough to stop the tears from pooling. The lines that crease her forehead whenever she’s worried have reappeared with a vengeance. He can feel her hopelessness, her helplessness. It’s alchemic, and he swallows it down, transmuting the iron coldness that plucks and stings in his chest into a fierce, golden warmth. He can protect her. He’ll hold her forever if he has to, hide her away from the world and its pain.

Once, just once, he will make everything alright for her.

“You…”

_You haven’t failed anyone._

_You’re incredible._

_I think I’m in love with you._

“I’ve never met anyone who can do the things that you do.”

He’s comforted her before but this time when his hand cups her cheek she doesn’t pull away. Her eyes fix desperately, pleadingly, on his and she leans into his touch, undoing him wholly.

He’s seen her one shade from naked. He’s clutched her to him dripping wet and shivering with nothing to come between his hands and her skin but somehow _this_ , this is more intimate than anything he’s known. This is what makes his breath catch and heats his blood: her fingertips brushing over the inside of his wrist, the warm slickness of her tears under his thumb, his name dropping from her lips like a promise.

Her eyes are rimmed red. Her bottom lip is swollen from where she’s been biting it. He traces it delicately with the pad of his thumb, unable to believe there was ever a time when he didn’t want to kiss her.

“I’m scared,” she whispers.

The confession wrenches at something deep within him. He can’t find the words he needs, so he pours his meaning into the only ones he can think of.

“Don’t be.”

For a moment she stays stock-still, long enough to send a shockwave of doubt through his mind. But then she shifts, leans in and up; he feels her teeth graze his lip as she returns the kiss. Beneath the salt from her tears he can taste the coffee he bought her earlier. Her fingers slip hesitantly over his hips, drawing him ever so slightly closer, and he can’t help the soft moan that forms low in his throat. Her hands drift across the small of his back at the sound, her fingers curling in towards him, pressing crescent moons into the flesh beneath his shirt.

He is the one who breaks the kiss, murmuring her name against her mouth even as he draws a shuddering breath, but she is the one who breaks the contact. Her hands creep back into her pockets; she takes a step back. Her eyes, when they find his again, are hooded as much with guilt as with desire.

“Peter, I - ”

Whatever the traitorous thought was that reminded her of decorum and duty, it vanishes abruptly before his eyes. Her words slide away into silence as her eyes flick to a spot behind his right shoulder. She sidesteps him with the easy grace that makes him wonder if she might have been a dancer, in another lifetime, if things had happened differently.

“Call Broyles,” she says, her palms pressed flat against the window. For a moment she stays there staring out into the inky dark. Then she turns on her heel with barely a glance at him and runs from the room.

**

Olivia shoves at the heavy door to the fire escape, pushing her way out as quickly as she can, and leans over the railing. The angle is different but she can still see the eerie glimmer flickering and pulsing, an unnatural addition to the small windows of light that normally dot the cityscape. Peter’s footsteps sound behind her.

“I don’t know, hang on,” he says, and she realises he’s already on the phone. Amidst the panic and adrenaline coursing through her, she feels a tiny blush of gratitude that Peter Bishop will, without question, follow her lead; that he’ll let her just walk away from the type of moment she never allows him to begin with, shelve his feelings and make a damn phone call on her say-so.

The shroud of light gives a particularly violent throb and she forces her whole attention back to it.

“Olivia, what can you see?” he asks.

“It’s a glimmer, like Walter said.” She quickly counts the blocks between the balcony she stands on and the building that glitters in the distance. “Four blocks south, two west. Near the river.” She pictures the street grid in her mind, keeping her eyes locked on glow, mentally ticking off map lines and landmarks. “Washington, I think.”

Peter repeats her words into the phone then asks more quietly, “Are you sure?”

“No?” The word tumbles out with a shaky laugh, fear and hysteria almost palpable on her tongue. She grips the railing in front of her more tightly, squinting into the dark again as if it will help. “I don’t know. I think so.”

“Okay, Walter says there’s a hotel on Washington that fits the criteria. Broyles is sending someone now.”

She nods without turning, swallowing down the choking tightness in her throat. She should be down there. Logically she knows that she is of more help up here, that the vantage point is better, that the glimmer would be lost to her in the jungle of cars and billboards and cross streets. But she should be down there, circling the city with the other agents, warning people, doing _something_.

The steady thrum of a helicopter engine interrupts her thoughts and she finds herself thankful, not for the first time, for Massive Dynamic’s enormous arsenal of equipment. A bright, white search light swings this way and that, picking out the buildings that line the Hudson. For a brief second it holds on the same building she’s watching, dimming the ultraviolet glow that surrounds it to almost nothing before moving on.

“That’s it!” she cries. “Tell Walter that was it!”

Almost as soon as the words are out of Peter’s mouth, the spotlight swings back to the building, pinning it with its beam. For long moments the glimmer coruscates and crawls beneath it, reminding her somehow of the strange slow tide of the deprivation tank, of how it had lapped at her skin with every breath she took. And then the spotlight blinks out, leaving the city darker and the glow so much brighter.

“You were right,” Peter says, his voice close behind her. “It was Washington. The Brayson Place Hotel. They’re evacuating now.”

The pride in his voice is almost tangible. Relief begins to creep through her and as if it has waited for this cue, the glimmer around the building vanishes. Her muscles, on the verge of relaxation, snap back to taut attention.

“It’s gone.”

“What?”

“The glimmer, Peter, it’s gone.” A sickening thought creeps into her mind, turning her stomach to ice. Frantically she scans the horizon, willing the glow to return, hoping with every fibre of her being that it will reappear in the same place. Her hands grasp the railing even more ferociously than before.

“Olivia. Olivia, _stop_.” He turns her bodily to face him, prying her fingers away from the cold steel bar they grip, one hand smoothing her hair back gently from her face. “It’s okay, they’re -”

“It’s _not_ ,” she cries, pushing his hands away. “It’s not okay. What if it didn’t work? What if evacuating those people caused the mass to change enough that _another_ building will be pulled over instead? And now I can’t see it.” She draws a shaky breath, thinking fast. “It must be the Cortexiphan. It’s been hours since I took it, it must have worn off. If I can get more - ”

“ _No_ ,” he says, soft but final. “No. Aside from the fact that I’m not letting you pump any more drugs into your system today, there’s no time. Walter was pretty adamant that once the building started to glimmer there was no stopping it from being taken. You helped get those people out. There’s nothing more you can do.”

His words are underscored by a sudden, violent earth tremor which throws her forward against him. He catches her around the waist with one arm, the other grabbing the railing in an attempt to steady them. Olivia’s thoughts race over and around his words, desperate to prove them wrong, calculating how far she will get if she shoves him away and runs downstairs now.

And then the tremor stops.

Peter’s arm is still around her, holding her close against him. She lifts her head slowly, knowing what she will find before she sees it: his eyes gazing down at her, almost navy in the shadowy light of the balcony, filled with compassion, concern, a hundred other things she doesn’t deserve to have him feel for her. The tightness works its way back into her throat. She bites down hard on her lower lip, and harder still when it doesn’t stop the tears from spilling out onto her cheeks, until Peter’s fingers brush the offending droplets away and he tucks her head into the crook of his neck, stroking the back of her head as she sobs.

“’Livia.” At first her name is just a soothing whisper above her, repeated at intervals, a vocal counterpoint to the rhythmic heartbeat beneath her ear. And then suddenly it’s louder, his voice a mix of insistence and awe.

“Olivia, look.”

His finger directs her vision to the building she’d been watching earlier. It’s flickering again, but not with a glow; this time it flickers wholly, in and out of reality, solid and see-through.

There is another tremor, smaller, more like a truck rumbling by than a hole being torn in the fabric of the universe. The building gives one last half-hearted pulse then vanishes, leaving only an empty black lot to prove it had ever stood there at all.

“You did it,” he says, a broad grin on his face.

“Yeah,” she breathes, blinking slowly at the darkness. The acknowledgement of success doesn’t bring relief this time, just the dread understanding of what might have been, what very nearly was. A sudden shiver runs through her. Peter’s arm tightens around her ever so slightly.

“Come on. Let’s get you inside out of the cold.”

**

“Better?”

Olivia looks up to see Peter grinning at her, leaning against the doorframe of the small computer room.

“Much,” she smiles. The chill is all but gone now, beaten into submission by the heat from the bank of computers behind her and the coffee he’d seemed to summon out of thin air before he went upstairs to debrief. She drains the last of it and sets the empty cup down on the desk she’s leaning against.

“Good.” He crosses the room in a few strides, begins tapping at the terminal he’d worked at earlier. “Walter’s almost done too. I told him I’d just need a few minutes to shut this down and we’d be right to go.”

“Peter?”

His hands fall still on the keyboard as he looks up at her. Her heart skips momentarily when their eyes meet and she looks down quickly at her hands, mouth suddenly dry. It’s silly, really. She’s kissed him once this evening already; she’s thought about it any number of times before then. Clearing her throat, she tries again.

“Thank you. For… You never doubted me today.”

He smiles, the same patient smile he gave her the last time they stood in this room together. She can still feel his words hanging in the air. _I’ve never met anyone who can do the things that you do._ The back of her neck warms with the beginnings of a blush.

He steps around the desk to press a hand to her cheek. “I never had any reason to.”

Still and silent, he stands in front of her, head slightly tilted as if questioning. She watches the rise and fall of his chest, the slight bob of his throat as he swallows, and she knows his answer. He won’t push her twice in one night.

His hand starts to slip away and she covers it with her own. For the second time that night, she leans up to press her lips against his.

Their first kiss had felt almost chaste, the shield of his body safe and comforting. This is anything but. His hands slide down her back, pull their hips together. She lays a palm on his chest, captivated by the way his heartbeat skitters beneath it, painfully aware that her own isn’t much steadier. She threads the fingers of her other hand up into his hair, drawing him down towards her, barely managing to fight the sudden urge to press as much of herself as she can against him, _into_ him. His mouth leaves hers long enough for him to flick his tongue against the shell of her ear and she gasps, fisting a hand in his shirt as she stumbles backward.

The edge of the desk catches her at the top of her thighs. Peter pushes her back until she’s almost laid out on it, hands planted firmly on either side of her hips, lips marking a trail along her collarbone. There’s been a cautionary voice in her head for months, reminding her of John, of the dangers of getting involved with another colleague, growing less and less effective for every passing glace Peter has thrown her way. When he returns to kiss her again, it’s with a low, throaty groan that speaks of possession and silences the warning utterly.

One of his hands slips under her shirt, sending waves of heat rushing through her as he swipes his thumb over the sensitive area under her breast. She locks her arms around the back of his neck, pulls him forward as she arches up off the desk. It’s as close as she can be and still not close enough, and she finds herself wishing that once, just once, she would wear a damn skirt so he could hike it up and do this properly. His breath is hot and erratic against her ear. She wriggles her hips forward and for a second feels the bulge in his jeans press against her inner thigh; one second of heady abandon until he steps back and the contact is gone.

“Hey,” he says softly, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps. Her hands stray out to scrabble at his shirt, trying to close the space between them. He covers them with his own, brings one to his mouth to place a gentle kiss against her fingertips. “I figure I ought to remind you where we are. Before we get too… This place must be crawling with security cameras.”

Reflexively, she glances up to the ceiling. A tiny red light blinks on and off, showing her he’s right. The burn in her cheeks is instantaneous. She glances back at Peter, taking stock: he looks as dishevelled as she feels. His hair is ruffled, his lips swollen and red. His eyes are still dark, and not just with arousal; she can see the familiar concern for her etched plainly underneath.

But he’s smiling. It’s warm and pure, and it tugs at the corners of her mouth, creating what feels like a perfect match on her own face. His hands ghost up the sides of her arms, coming to rest on her shoulders. She can feel the heat of his palms even through the fabric of her jacket, and it takes every ounce of self-control she has not to lean into him again, camera or no. Instead she exhales shakily, closes her eyes, and tries to force her breathing back to a semblance of normal.

His smile is still there when she opens them again.

“Do you – do you want to go get drinks?” she asks. There’s no reason to be nervous but her pulse quickens anyway, heart thudding in her ears.

“Drinks?”

“Yeah. I’ve heard that’s what normal people do. Go out for drinks, maybe have dinner… fall into bed at the end of the night.” She says the final few words to her lap, willing her cheeks not to flame any more than they currently are. He catches her under the chin with his finger, dragging her eyes back up to meet his.

“Sounds wonderful.”

He holds out a hand. She takes it, slipping down off the desk and to her feet. Pulling her toward him, Peter presses a single kiss to her forehead, and she feels the unspoken promise of many more to come. And then he steps back, leading her out of the room, his fingers laced into hers.

  
_fin._   


  



End file.
